


Shell game

by yamyamyam



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Self-cest, The bisexual supersoldiers America deserves, in every universe, universe-hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 03:58:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17573435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamyamyam/pseuds/yamyamyam
Summary: There are rules for this, Bucky is certain.  You go to sleep in one universe, you're in the same universe when you wake up.  And after sleeping through most of the 20th century in a dystopian kaleidoscope of fucked-up sleeping arrangements, Bucky thought he was the expert on bizarre wake-up calls.Or, Bucky swaps places with another universe's Steve and makes the most of it.





	Shell game

There are rules for this, Bucky is certain. You go to sleep in one universe, you're in the same universe when you wake up. And after sleeping through most of the 20th century in a dystopian kaleidoscope of fucked-up sleeping arrangements, Bucky thought he was the expert on bizarre wake-up calls.

But when he wanders in to the common area to fix himself some wake-up coffee, it's clear that someone has been dicking around with the handbook, because he _knows_ the couch was green last night. And the coffee maker seems to have moved a foot to the left. And Natasha, Tony, Sam, and Bucky are staring at him like he has two heads.

Record-scratch. _Bucky_ is staring at him. Himself. OtherBucky is staring at him.

Bucky stares back.

He turns back to the coffee maker. This day is obviously going to require a lot of caffeine.

=====

"Why are there two of you now. One Terminator was enough." 

"Thanks, Tony." OtherBucky at least has his Tony-glare down pat. 

"One was _more_ than enough, let's be real."

" _Sam._ " 

" _Bucky._ "

Natasha ignores them and walks forward slowly to the kitchen area. Suddenly she is a blur of movement, thighs and electricity and deadly grace pinning Bucky against the wall. "I don't know who you are or what you're planning, but you have seriously miscalculated."

Bucky frowns at his still-empty coffee cup, then looks back at Natasha. He sighs, lets the mug fall from his hand to the carpet, and shoves off with his left shoulder, breaking her hold, and, after a brief scuffle for dominance, has her in an armlock, the raw brawn of his metal arm swinging things in his favour for the moment. "I'm Bucky, _Natalia_ , and my _plan_ was to get some coffee."

The sound of a revolver being cocked next to his ear penetrates the silence that follows, and OtherBucky says softly "Why don't you let go of Natasha before someone gets hurt."

Fine. Bucky lets go and stands back, scowling. OtherBucky scowls back. Natasha stands up, looking back and forth as if she's not sure which one of them she wants to hurt more.

Bucky sighs again. "Okay obviously this is some kind of magic bullshit or something. Can we discuss this like adults?"

"Uh, or you're a hydra clone here to kill us all and we should discuss this like armed thugs?" Tony interjects.

OtherBucky looks over at Tony, exasperated. "If they could have cloned me, they'd have had an army of super-soldiers years ago, dumbass." It sounds like this is not the first time they've had this discussion.

Bucky holds up a fist. OtherBucky holsters his gun and fistbumps him.

Sam looks alarmed. "Hey man, don't just put down the gun! He could be evil you!"

Tony looks skeptical. "He doesn't have a goatee."

Sam looks over at Tony "Although _you_ do, Tony."

"We're not talking about me."

OtherBucky fixes Bucky a cup of coffee, which he accepts gratefully. "Thanks. Hey, like the shirt." OtherBucky's shirt is a Henley in a tasteful plum colour.

"Back atcha! Always liked red."

"Is it weird that we're just having smalltalk with ourself?"

"Well.. yeah. Usually there's only one of me, so."

"No, I mean... I always assumed if I met a duplicate me we'd skip straight to making out." 

OtherBucky raises an eyebrow. Bucky raises an eyebrow back. In unison they walk out of the room, switching to a run as they reach the hallway to the elevator lobby. 

After a long, awkward, pause, Tony says "Did that just happen?"

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to _think_ about it.

A grate falls to the floor with a muffled clank, and Clint's head pops out of a ceiling ventilation shaft.

"Think about what?"

=====

"I have to say, I'm not usually in to guys, but you're quite the handsome devil." 

Bucky pauses. "You think we're... you're straight?" 

"I... guess? Yeah?" OtherBucky flushes as he says this, avoiding meeting Bucky's eyes. Interesting.

"So you and Steve aren't together here?" 

"No, nothing like... Anyway, he would never be..." OtherBucky is now completely pink and looking at the floor. Shit, does Bucky have that kind of obvious tell too? 

OtherBucky abandons his previous sentence and changes tack. "So you and your world's Natasha aren't...?" 

"We had a thing in the 70s, but it's... hard to remember." 

"Yeahhh I hear that." They both rub their metal arms absentmindedly. 

OtherBucky looks up abruptly. "Hang on. In the 70s? Natasha can't have even been born yet." 

Bucky cocks an eyebrow and looks over at OtherBucky "Exactly how much do you know about Natalia's past?" 

OtherBucky looks very discomfited. "Not enough, apparently."

Bucky decides to let this one go, trusting that this universe's Natalia will be just as prone to casual violence towards people who don't mind their own business as his own would. OtherBucky unlocks the door and ushers Bucky in with a palm on the small of his back. 

"So if you two are together, aren't you worried she'll object to the two of us..." they stop short at the sight of Natasha, leaning against the bedroom doorframe and eyeing the two of them with a hungry look, a key-ring with a little red star on it dangling carelessly from one finger. 

"Hello, boys. I hope you weren't going to start without me." 

OtherBucky looks over to Bucky, lips quirked. "Worried? Not really, no."

=====

Bruce looks pained. "Well yes, obviously it's possible, it just happened."

"What about conservation of mass and all that jazz?" Tony is pacing, his expressive hands flicking Bruce's holodisplays out of his way accidentally on purpose, while Bruce, sighing, brings each one back up in Tony's wake. "Shouldn't he at least have, I don't know, made a displaced air sonic boom? Not that I'm glad he didn't boom all over my living room." 

"I thought we weren't talking about that." Clint's voice drifts down from his perch, lazily hanging upside-down by his knees from God's own drill-press.

Sam snickers and throws a paper airplane at Clint, who catches it behind his head just before impact.

Bruce looks thoughtful. "Do we know no mass was exchanged? Are you missing a supersoldier's worth of chair or something?"

Sam, using his advanced knowledge of aeronautics to prepare another paper missile, looks up, concerned. "Guys, has anyone seen Steve since this happened?"

=====

"So, can you tell us apart with our clothes off?"

Bucky, debauched and loose-limbed, is lying with his head pillowed on Natasha's thigh. She is sitting up, supported by OtherBucky's chest, while he idly cards through her hair with one hand and toys with a nipple with the other.

"Of course I can. You're Bucky," she presses a finger to Bucky's chest, "...and _you_ are _Bucky._ " she finishes, reaching back to tap OtherBucky fondly on the nose.

The Buckys team up to pull off a quadruple eye-roll at her. She looks smug. The eye-rolling intensifies.

"Oh, fine, if you're going to be that way." She reaches over to where her catsuit is draped over a lamp and pulls a lipstick tube out of a pouch. 

"You can be Bucky number 1" she says, drawing a 1 in Ruby Woo Stay-All-Day Semi-Matte on his forehead. Bucky wonders vaguely if it is poisoned, but cannot find it in himself to care very hard. Natasha twists to face OtherBucky. "And you can be--" 

"Excuse me? Why do I have to be second place?" 

Natasha glowers. "Let me finish, children." OtherBucky quells, still frowning. Natasha places a finger on his lips to shush him and his face softens as he kisses it gently. "And you can be..." she reaches up to inscribe a letter on his forehead. "Bucky A." 

"So you can't tell us apart, is what you're saying," Bucky, propped up on one elbow now, concludes. Natasha sighs and leans back on OtherBucky and recrosses her legs. Bucky and OtherBucky follow the motion with their eyes and swallow in unison. 

"I couldn't possibly comment. I can leave if the ambiguity troubles you." 

Bucky and OtherBucky clear their throats hastily, muttering "Not necessary" and "Won't be a problem" respectively, each putting an arm around her to add weight to their words.

"I thought so. Now, where were we." 

Twin wolfish grins appear and one Bucky kisses her neck while another nibbles on a thigh, and after a little while even they don't care which of them is which.

=====

Later, in a quiet moment, JARVIS addresses them. "Sergeants, Ma'am, I apologize for overriding the privacy protocol, but Sir has requested your presence in his lab, urgently." "Yeah well tell him he can--" "Sir says to add that Captain Rogers has been unaccounted for since the arrival of your... counterpart, and that the two may be related." OtherBucky and Bucky both sit up at this, looking alarmed. "We'll be right there." 

"I'll get a cloth for the lipstick," OtherBucky offers, and steps in to the bathroom. 

"Sorry, sweetheart, you'll just have to live with the mystery," a now-unlabelled Bucky tells Natasha, who is composed and fully dressed without a hair out of place.

"You have opposite arms missing, you idiots," she says fondly, and glides out of the apartment.

Bucky and OtherBucky stare at each other in shock. 

"Fuck, she's right." 

=====

"So let me get this straight, the universe just, poof, decides to switch our Steve for another copy of Sergeant CrankyPants?" Sam is not, he decides, paid enough for this shit.

"Well not poof, no, presumably there was some kind of..."

"...of phenomenon that..."

"...ah, that could have triggered..."

Bruce and Tony trail off at the same time, look at each other, and shrug.

"Yeah. Poof. Poof is all we've got so far." Bruce sits down and starts doctoring a fresh cup of tea.

"So what are we going to do? I mean, your universe seems nice and all, but I've kind of got a good thing going on in mine." puts in Bucky.

"Plus, can you imagine what two Steves are getting up to over there?" adds OtherBucky. 

Bucky pales. Bruce pales. Tony pales. Natasha carefully does not change her contrast in either direction. Sam looks like he wants to go to that universe and stay. Clint... where did Clint get a lollipop from, anyway?

"Well what if we call that Strange guy? Isn't he Mister Weird-Ass Universe Stuff?" Grape-flavoured Clint asks.

"Strange! That asshole? No way. No. Way." Tony looks harassed.

"That's not a bad idea, actually." Bruce sips his tea consideringly.

"He is not coming in to my tower."

"I'm afraid I am, dreary though I find it." 

Dr. Stephen Strange is, if nothing else, a master of the mystical art of asshole grand entrances.

"Strange! What brings you to my lovely home? Nice, nice, how's the family, get out of here now."

"Stark, I assure you I will depart from your... _charming_ company the second I have concluded my affairs here." Strange disappears and reappears abruptly on the other side of the lab, looking no less irritated by it. "Perhaps sooner."

"So are you here to send me back?" Bucky doesn't know who this chump is, but the coffee is starting to wear off, and snuggles aside, he really, really wants to get home before Team Multiple Steves gets in to some righteous fight big enough to reduce the place to rubble.

"That is a... simplistic way of expressing it, but yes. I will return you to your universe of origin, and restore to this one the matter that belongs here."

"Uh, that _matter_ is Steve. He's gonna be all in the right order, right? He won't be, like, a pile of sludge?" Clint asks forlornly, his tone at odds with the four lollipops he is now juggling. He pops one back in his mouth when he is done speaking.

Dr. Strange looks dubiously at Clint, no doubt allergic to being sticky. "Please. I am a master of the mystical arts. Nothing so crass will occur in one of my workings."

"How did you know what happened, anyway?" Sam says, sounding suspicious. "I mean, we didn't exactly take out an ad on craigslist about a missing Avenger."

"I am attuned to the vibration of the smallest particle to the vastness of the heavens themselves. I did not need to be," Strange sniffs. " _summoned_."

Bruce puts down his tea and looks at Tony. They look at Strange. Strange looks back. "Well that sounds like bullshit," Tony ventures.

Strange looks stormy. 

Bruce says "What Tony means is..."

Strange clenches his jaw and says quietly "And it may be partly my fault."

Tony looks like Christmas and his birthday went in on a Pure Liquid Joy Of The Month Club subscription for him. "Oh, DO tell!" He pulls a chair up to the lab bench and puts his chin in his hand. "I am ALL EARS, Stephen."

Strange's face could melt... Bucky isn't sure what, but he hopes it won't be him. "I may have been conducting some very... sensitive research in to interuniversal metaphysics, which had some... unforeseen consequences."

Tony's pupils threaten to overtake Manhattan. He is a chef preparing an all-Crow banquet for Strange to eat. Crow charcuterie, crow pot pie, frisée salad with a feather reduction dressing and crowtons, crowquembouche for dessert, reservation for Strange, party of one, your table is ready motherfucker.

Strange meets his eyes and dares him to say one word without saying one word.

Before Tony takes the bait, Bruce has appeared between them, waving arms in front of each face until he has their attention. "I'm sure we'd all just like to focus on getting our friends back where they belong. Wouldn't we, Tony."

Tony makes a pouty face at Bruce. Bruce gives him a withering look that promises no dessert for a _month_. Tony sighs. "Fine, yes, fine. I'm sure you didn't _mean_ to totally fuck up."

"TONY." Bruce is looking a little green around the edges. 

Tony steps back and sighs, raking his hand through his hair. "Please, Doctor Strange, I humbly request your assistance in the matter of my mysteriously, no-blame-assigned, disappeared super-soldier pal. Please."

Strange looks daggers at him for a few seconds longer on principle, but eventually relents. "As I was saying. I will not trouble you with my presence once I have fin--" he claps his hands sharply once and vanishes.

And so does Bucky.

=====

Bucky looks around, startled. The lab was full of people a minute ago, but now it's almost empty. In one corner, Tony and a man Bucky doesn't recognize are hunched over a terminal, seemingly unaware of his presence.

Bucky clears his throat. Tony looks up.

"Buckaroo! Buckminster Fuller! You're back! You are back, right? No tentacles or anything? Missing limbs?"

Bucky forms his metal hand in to a fist and growls.

Tony shifts to put an extra layer of furniture between himself and Barnes. "...too soon?"

The unknown man stands up, a tall, greying figure with an arrogant cast to his face. "See, Stark? I told you I could do it."

"Richards, you haven't even compiled it yet, I don't see--"

Bucky coughs. "Strange."

"Yeah, it's strange, all right, He hasn't even done anything yet."

"No, I mean, it was Dr. Strange. In the other universe. He mysticked me back, or whatever. Clapped his hands and did some..." Bucky waggles his fingers vaguely. "You know."

Two voices ask "Strange? That asshole?" Tony and this Richards guy are apparently agreed on the subject.

"I don't know if I'd have him over for tea, but the guy sure got results, din't he?" 

Tony begins to reply, but suddenly seems to realize that this means he no longer needs to tolerate the presence of Reed Richards in his lab, and begins hustling him out the door.

"Hey, JARVIS?"

"Yes, Sergeant Barnes?"

"Where's Stevie at?"

"He is in his apartment."

"Thanks, J."

"You're welcome. And if I may say so, Sergeant, welcome home."

=====

Bucky taps his fingers impatiently on the elevator door, and slides sideways out as soon as it opens on to the floor he shares with Steve. He opens the door and steps through, as 240 pounds of supersoldier launches forward and gathers him up in a massive hug.

"Bucky! Oh my god, Bucky, you're back."

"I missed you too, buddy."

"I'm sick of losing you." Steve's voice cracks a bit on "you," and Bucky strokes his back consolingly.

"Hey, hey, Steve, I've got you. You and me both, pal. You and me both."

Eventually they untangle and Steve holds Bucky's shoulders at arm's length, looking him over as if to reassure himself he was really there. Bucky looks back, frankly appreciative - Steve is wearing sweatpants and nothing else.

"So what did you get up to with their Steve? I gotta say, I was kinda worried I'd come back and find the world on fire with two of you here."

Steve instantly turns red. "Well, um."

Bucky stifles a grin. "Spit it out, Rogers, you know you can't get anything past me."

The bedroom door opens and Natasha walks out, smacking Steve on the ass as she passes him. "Good to see you back, James." She breezes through the front door and it closes behind her.

Bucky looks back at Steve and cocks an eyebrow. 

"His Bucky was straight!" Steve blurts out. Bucky snorts. "The poor guy, I just... what was I supposed to do? We took pity on him." Bucky cracks up. Steve's face, previously ready to be chastised and then look stoic about it, reboots in confusion. Bucky, now doubled over with laughter, staggers to the couch. Steve, looking concerned, follows him tentatively. 

"Uh, Buck?"

"I think he's gonna be okay, pal. I think he's gonna be okay."

=====

Tony and Bruce are still looking at the spot where Dr. Strange isn't when Natasha notices that the second Bucky is gone.

"JARVIS, is there anyone matching Sergeant Barnes's particulars anywhere in the tower other than this room?"

"No, Ms. Romanoff. However, you may be interested to note that Captain Rogers is now present in his quarters."

"Stevie!" OtherBucky bolts for the elevator. 

Tony and Bruce look at each other. "We don't need to talk about how that was possible, right?" hazards Bruce.

"Nope. Noooooo-pe." Tony pops the p for emphasis and firmly waves a holoscreen off without looking at it.

"Just checking."

=====

Natasha walks out of Steve's apartment just as OtherBucky arrives at the door. He shrugs; he has long since learned not to ask how she materializes ahead of him, in the next room, around corners, in locked server rooms in sealed compounds. When queried she always responds with "If you have to ask, I can't tell you." 

She pauses to brush a kiss to his lips. He cups her face in his hands for a moment, thoughtful.

"Natashka."

"James."

"Did we ever meet? Before I... before?"

Her eyes take on a sorrowful quality for a moment before her face reverts to its usual cryptic mask, but he knows she has allowed him to see this, not let it slip by accident. "Ask me another day." She leans up and kisses his cheek. "Go on, he's waiting for you."

He squeezes her shoulder and carries on through the doorway. Right. He is a man on a mission. Primary mission directive: STEEEEEEEVE.

"Bucky!" Steve, beet red from hairline to chest, is facing him with a blinding golden-retriever grin.

Steve oofs but remains standing as OtherBucky tackles him with an embrace. "Stevie, you're back! You had me worried, champ."

"I'm fine, Buck. I'm just happy to be back home."

OtherBucky steps back and registers for the first time that Steve is shirtless. It's a... really good look on him. "So what did you get up to in that other universe? I was afraid to imagine what kind of trouble two Steve Rogers could cause. Steve Rogerses. Steves Rogers? How do you say that anyway?"

"BUCKY." Steve's eyes are wide and staring in to OtherBucky's eyes with an intensity that would seem impossible in anyone else but is maybe a 7 out of 10 for Steve. 

"Yeah, Steve?" 

"YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE WHO OTHER ME IS DATING."

OtherBucky slowly begins to smile. "Try me, Rogers. You'd be surprised what I can believe."

**Author's Note:**

> Natasha actually just asks JARVIS to delay Bucky's elevator when she wants to get there first. JARVIS would tell him if he asked.
> 
> =====
> 
> I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/yamtimesthree), yellin' about Bucky usually.


End file.
